Comparison with the reference design, front view

ASUS ROG Matrix 7970

Reference AMD Radeon HD 7970

Comparison with the reference design, rear view

ASUS ROG Matrix 7970

Reference AMD Radeon HD 7970

You can see this is a custom product which differs much from the reference design. In fact, only some of the memory chip layout has remained the same. Most importantly, the power supply unit has been overhauled. The 16-phase (!) design instead of the reference 4-phase one provides colossal overclocking and fine-tuning capabilities. For which, by the way, there's an official utility bundled with the card.

An alternative way to overclock the card is to use buttons in the rear part. Pressing those increases or decreases core voltage. Visually, this is indicated by the 'MATRIX' LED that changes color depending on GPU load.

Coolers

The cooler looks much like the popular DirectCu series from ASUS. There are two massive heatsinks interconnected with heatpipes. One of the heatsinks' copper base is pressed against the core. The cover is as massive, featuring two high-quality, low-noise fans. Neither memory chips nor power transistors have dedicated cooling installed, although the bundle does include an auxillary heatsink. As a whole, the cooler is very quiet, even when the fan speed is over 2000 rpm.

Temperature monitoring results

We measured temperatures using the EVGA PrecisionX utility.

After 6 hours under maximum load, the top core temperature was below 80°C, even with the GPU fully loaded. This is simply great.

Package contents

A basic package should include a user manual and a software CD.

The card comes bundled with a basic package plus DVI-to-VGA and DVI-to-HDMI adapters, an 8-pin power splitter, and cabling for core/memory voltage/current monitoring.

Crysis 2

Final thoughts

The capability rating compares each graphics card with GeForce GT 630, which is considered a baseline, or 100%. The rating is based on both synthetic and gaming results and shows, as the name implies, what a product is capable of.

The usability rating is obtained by dividing each card's capability rating by its price. It basically shows whether a given product is over or underpriced, considering what it can do, and thus how reasonable it is to buy it.

The complete ratings can be found in our i3Dspeed. Below are just the parts relevant to today's review.

Sorted by capability (high to low)

#

Card

Capability rating

Usability rating

Approx. price, USD

07

ASUS ROG MATRIX 7970, 1100/6600

860

175

491

08

GTX 680 4096MB, 1071-1200/6000

850

140

609

09

HD 7970 GHz 3072MB, 1050/1050/6000

810

169

480

10

GTX 680 2048MB, 1000-1100/6000

790

147

538

12

HD 7970 3072MB, 925/925/5500

730

158

463

Sorted by usability (high to low)

#

Card

Usability rating

Capability rating

Approx. price, USD

24

ASUS ROG MATRIX 7970, 1100/6600

175

860

491

25

HD 7970 GHz 3072MB, 1050/1050/6000

169

810

480

26

HD 7970 3072MB, 925/925/5500

158

730

463

29

GTX 680 2048MB, 1000-1100/6000

147

790

538

30

GTX 680 4096MB, 1071-1200/6000

140

850

609

Solutions from ASUS are usually overpriced which prevents them from leading in their price range. But what do you know! This one is the leader in its price range both in terms of performance and usability. It seems like card's performance is so great that it actually compensates for it being overpriced.

ASUS ROG MATRIX 7970 is an excellent variant of Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. It's designed for overclockers, which shows in card's great tweaking options. We, for example, managed to achieve stable operation at 1250/6900 MHz, which is close to GeForce GTX Titan. Last but not least, the card works quietly thanks to the impressive albeit massive cooling system.